Two.

“How’s your poster?” Polly asked, sitting down next to me on the bus ride home. Polly was my next-door neighbor, venting confidant, and – by default – best friend. She wore her hair in low pigtails every day for ten years, about the time it went out of style, and loved bubble gum for exactly fifteen seconds a piece.

“Tedious.”

“How’s the ball of sunshine?” she asked with a grin.

I thought back to Madison. “Tedious.”

“I don’t see your problem with her, honestly.” Polly unwound the headphones from around her iPod. “She seems nice to me.”

“That’s my problem,” I said sourly, leaning into the window. “Nobody has a single bad thing to say about her. She’s always so damn peppy. Like, isn’t that irritating?”

“I think you’re jealous.”

“What do I have to be jealous over?”

“She’s happy?” Polly put in one earbud.

“She’s naïve.”

“Well then who better than Jamie Lawson to show her the cruelty of the world?”

“Don’t patronize me,” I said, but Polly had already put the second earbud in her ear. I slouched down in the bus bench and sighed. I needed a nap.

And napping was exactly what I did. I had the same dream I always had, with the mirrors and the staircase. This time, I woke up freezing. Mom had started turning off the heat at night. Honestly, we couldn’t afford it.

I was well rested for school, which was a feeling as pleasant as it was unexpected. I finished my Math homework in class and caught up on the English reading. But with twenty minutes before Biology, my mind began to wander. Madison. I didn’t have the energy to put up with her today. But at least this was the day of our presentations; after today, our interactions could return to the superficial.

Oh fuck. The presentations were today!

I fumbled through my backpack, knocking my English books off my desk. When I pulled out the index cards, some of the students were looking back at me. But I didn’t have time to worry about them: I hadn’t finished our cards!

The beauty of my handwriting quickly made way for time management. I scrawled down the methods the best I could remember them; I didn’t have time to copy them from my notes. The results were vague, without numbers, and I swear the correlations went in the other direction. The bell rang. I swore under my breath and ran out of the classroom toward the Biology lab.

“Hey Jamie!” Madison was actually sitting at my desk, but she jumped to her feet the second she saw me walk through the door. Beside her, on my desk, was the poster. It was beautifully decorated with stickers and a thin shining boarder. I sat down in front of it.

“I know I went overboard with the coloring,” Madison went on, “but I figured we could tape your index cards over the top of it and it would really give it that ‘pop’ you know? Then we don’t have to do extra work either. Just tape the cards you made. Did you get them done?”

“Uh, yeah, I did.” I still had the stack of cards in my hand. I passed them to her. I watched her eyes gloss over the words, over my less-than-perfect handwriting, over my abysmal explanations. My chest hurt. I didn’t care what this girl thought of me, not really, but I wasn’t a bad student. Honestly.

“These are okay,” she said with almost no confidence, and then again, louder and more certain. “These are good! I swear, I’ll never understand how you can write so pretty. And the interpretations are almost poetic.”

And with that, she went to work setting the cards on the poster. Maybe I felt guilty, or maybe I was trying to do my part, but I helped her. She stuck the Hypothesis card to the top, and I tried to line up the three Methods cards in a row. We both reached for the Conclusion, but my hand landed on top of hers.

Like lightning, she snapped her hand back to her chest. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, staring at the final index card, and then in my eyes. She let out a breath, her lips flat and unturned. It was strange, seeing her without a smile. “You go ahead,” she told me.

“Sure.” So I taped the Conclusion card in place and tilted up the poster for the both of us to see. At least it looked gorgeous…

“Jamie, Madison?” Mrs. Hancock called. “Are you both ready?”

We presented first. It must have been quite the disparity, seeing us up at the front of the room. Madison – only a few inches shorter than me, with her wavy blonde hair and her summer dress in the middle of winter – spoke most of the presentation. Meanwhile I – donned in just a black hoodie and blue jeans, long brown hair tied to the side in a ponytail – pretended like I had contributed even half the efforts she had. I hated group projects.

Afterward, we were told to sit down and the next presentation began. At the end of the hour, before the bell, Mrs. Hancock passed out a slip of paper to each group. Madison got ours.

“So?” I asked. But she was staring intently at the slip, like she had forgotten how to read. Her eyebrows tightened and her lips parted, softly, just enough to breathe. Then they closed again and turned up in a smile.

“C Plus! Not too shabby!”

“A C? What? Gimme that.” I snatched the paper out from her hands and looked it over. Nice presentation. Lacked information. No definable variables. No graphics on poster. I read it twice. Fuck…

“I’m sorry,” I said flatly, staring at the letter grade like it might change, at the comments like they might transform. Maybe into something that wasn’t my fault.

“What? No, it’s fine!” Madison waved her arms around like a lunatic, but it sure got my attention. “It was completely my bad. I probably used the wrong colors – my parents were busy and I didn’t want to bother them with little things like that. Honestly, I should have known better than to jeopardize your grade like that.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, irritation rising in my voice. “I fucked up the cards!”

Madison winced. I… hadn’t expected that…

“I’m really sorry,” she said again, but without the energy, without the smile. She zipped up her backpack, slung it over her shoulder, and was out the door even before the bell had rung.